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Friday, 11 March 2011

Capitalism, climate change and the Left

'Can we solve the daunting problem of climate change within a capitalist system? This is no academic question - a wealth of scientific evidence points to the potentially catastrophic scale of climate change.

There remains a huge gulf between what needs to be done to stop climate change wreaking destruction and the solutions offered by political and business leaders. While seemingly everyone proclaims their ‘green’ credentials - except of course the ‘climate sceptics’ who deny climate change - the dominant solutions are superficial, trapped within the logic of the very system that has generated such terrible problems in the first place.

Ecology and Socialism, by US-based environmental activist and science academic Chris Williams, scrutinises the mainstream arguments and offers a more radical alternative, as indicated by its subtitle: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. Derek Wall, an activist in the Green Left current of the UK’s Green Party, is similarly concerned with outlining an alternative to capitalist remedies. His book, The Rise of the Green Left: Inside the Worldwide Ecosocialist Movement, locates the causes of climate change in the unchecked expansion of the global capitalist economy and outlines a manifesto for change.'